How does irradiation affect food?
The process involves exposing the food, either packaged or in bulk, to carefully controlled amounts of ionizing radiation for a specific time to achieve certain desirable objectives. When microbes present in the food are irradiated, the energy from the radiation breaks the bonds in the DNA molecules, causing defects in the genetic instructions. Unless this damage can be repaired, the organism will die or will be unable to reproduce. It matters if the food is frozen or fresh, because it takes larger radiation dose to kill microbes in frozen foods. The effectiveness of the process depends also on the organisms sensitivity to irradiation, on the rate at which it can repair damaged DNA, and especially on the amount of DNA in the target organism: • Parasites and insect pests, which have large amounts of DNA, are rapidly killed by an extremely low dose of irradiation. • It takes more irradiation to kill bacteria, because they have less DNA. • Viruses are the smallest pathogens that have nucl
